A healthcare provider comes across hundreds of customer calls every day. Some are made for scheduling appointments, some are for claiming insurance, and some are for raising complaints or queries. As a result, hospitals and clinics need to handle different customers and simultaneously pay attention to their core responsibilities – patient care. This was the sole purpose of outsourcing healthcare contact center services coming into existence.

Patients usually connect with hospitals or clinics for multiple needs ranging from event registration to general health concerns. As a result, seeking the professional help of a contact center becomes mandatory. Besides, it is crucial to measure operational metrics to learn about patient pain points and deliver positive experiences. With an outsourced contact center, healthcare businesses can easily fulfill such desires.

Let’s take a closer look at the key operational metrics that help healthcare providers to eliminate the inefficiencies within their contact center.

1. First contact resolution:

   This is the most important parameter that denotes how efficiently agents can resolve customer queries or issues at the first interaction. Tracking this metric helps contact centers get a better insight into agents’ performance and effectiveness.

   When a contact center observes a high FCR rate, it implies that agents have successfully resolved problems without any further call transfer, holds, or callbacks. Renowned BPO agencies even use this metric to identify the reasons that lead to multiple call transfers and poor response times. Some common reasons include lack of resources, poor skills & knowledge base, zero access to advanced tools, etc. As a result, multiple training sessions are regularly conducted to upgrade the contact center services offered by a healthcare BPO company.

2. Average hold time:

   The average hold times matter a lot for a healthcare contact center. Since every patient expects fast and accurate solutions from their healthcare service providers, long hold times can be a major reason for added frustration. This leads to poor patient satisfaction and low engagement. Hence, ideal contact centers focus more on monitoring average hold times to avoid these challenges.

   Modern contact centers make use of different communication platforms for seamless patient interactions. They provide support over the phone, email, live webchats, and even social media platforms to enhance the patient experience. The best thing about these contact centers is they constantly monitor every channel and ensure that every patient’s need gets fulfilled. This is one of the primary reasons why outsourcing healthcare contact center is always the best approach.

3. Call abandonment rate:

   Abandoned calls can significantly impact healthcare businesses’ success. This happens when patients are unable to connect with healthcare customer support agents or when their needs get fulfilled while they are waiting to reach a representative on the phone. In such situations, they often look for other alternatives to meet their specific needs.

   According to experts, contact centers experiencing a high percentage of call abandonment rate make it difficult for healthcare organizations to thrive in the current competitive market. Therefore, keeping the call abandonment rate in check is the only solution to avoid operational challenges.

   Abandoned calls are often inevitable. But you can certainly minimize the rate by keeping track of it, understanding the reasons for abandoned calls, and offering a proactive approach. Outsourcing healthcare contact center services can certainly be of great help in this area.

4. Average call handling time:

   This measures the time an agent spends on a call with a customer. It calculates conversation durations, call hold durations, call transfers, and post-call work durations to measure the efficiency of an agent in dealing with a customer problem.

   For a healthcare provider, monitoring average call handling times is pretty crucial. It helps in learning about agents’ efficiency in handling calls and delivering satisfactory patient experiences. Though this may not be a primary quality indicator, it helps get closer insights into unusually long or short calls.

   Experts claim that contact centers with low call handling times are more effective in generating outstanding results. Many even use advanced technologies and conduct several training sessions to help agents deliver quality support to patients. With proper training and easy access to AI-powered systems, agents can cut down on unnecessary pauses during customer interactions.

Outsource healthcare customer services to maximize patient experiences

Contact centers have become one of the fundamental parts of a healthcare customer outreach strategy. With a proven strategy, they even contribute a lot to patient engagement and patient satisfaction. Therefore, if your current patient experiences upset you, it is better to look forward to outsourcing medical BPO services. It can undoubtedly bring more new potential healthcare customers and, eventually, better business turnover.